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Early modern Venice was an exceptional city. Located at the intersection of trade routes and cultural borders, it teemed with visitors, traders, refugees and intellectuals. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that such a city should foster groups and individuals of unorthodox beliefs, whose views and life styles would bring them into conflict with the secular and religious authorities. Drawing on a vast store of primary sources - particularly those of the Inquisition - this book recreates the social fabric of Venice between 1640 and 1740. It brings back to life a wealth of minor figures who inhabited the city, and fostered ideas of dissent, unbelief and atheism in the teeth of the Counter-Reformation. The book vividly paints a scene filled with craftsmen, friars and priests, booksellers, apothecaries and barbers, bustling about the city spaces of sociability, between coffee-houses and workshops, apothecaries' and barbers' shops, from the pulpit and drawing rooms, or simply publicly speaking about their ideas. To give depth to the cases identified, the author overlays a number of contextual themes, such as the survival of Protestant (or crypto-Protestant) doctrines, the political situation at any given time, and the networks of dissenting groups that flourished within the city, such as the 'free metaphysicists' who gathered in the premises of the hatter Bortolo Zorzi. In so doing this rich and thought provoking book provides a systematic overview of how Venetian ecclesiastical institutions dealt with the sheer diffusion of heterodox and atheistical ideas at different social levels. It will be of interest not only to scholars of Venice, but all those with an interest in the intellectual, cultural and religious history of early-modern Europe.
Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, and the implications of that deviation. In the Middle Ages, the natural world was understood as divinely created and infused with mysterious power. This world was accessible to human knowledge and susceptible to human manipulation through three modes of engagement: religion, magic, and science. How these ways of understanding developed in light of modern notions of rationality is an important element of ongoing scholarly conversation. As Kieckhefer has emphasized, ambiguity and ambivalence characterize medieval understandings of the divine and demonic powers at work in the world. The ten chapters in this volume focus on four main aspects of this assertion: the cult of the saints, contested devotional relationships and practices, unsettled judgments between magic and religion, and inconclusive distinctions between magic and science. Freshly insightful, this study of ambiguity between magic and religion will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of medieval studies, religious studies, European history, and the history of science. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume are Michael D. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.
Investigating the impact of Arabic medieval astrological and magical theories on early modern occult philosophy, this book argues that they provided a naturalistic explanation of astral influences and magical efficacy based on Aristotelian notions of causality.
The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, published in 2007, provides an introduction to a complex period of change in the subject matter and practice of philosophy. The philosophy of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries is often seen as transitional between the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages and modern philosophy, but the essays collected here, by a distinguished international team of contributors, call these assumptions into question, emphasizing both the continuity with scholastic philosophy and the role of Renaissance philosophy in the emergence of modernity. They explore the ways in which the science, religion and politics of the period reflect and are reflected in its philosophical life, and they emphasize the dynamism and pluralism of a period which saw both new perspectives and enduring contributions to the history of philosophy. This will be an invaluable guide for students of philosophy, intellectual historians, and all who are interested in Renaissance thought.
Recent scholarship has shown that modern postural yoga is the outcome of a complex process of transcultural exchange and syncretism. This book doubles down on those claims and digs even deeper, looking to uncover the disparate but entangled roots of modern yoga practice. Anya Foxen shows that some of what we call yoga, especially in North America and Europe, is genealogically only slightly related to pre-modern Indian yoga traditions. Rather, it is equally, if not more so, grounded in Hellenistic theories of the subtle body, Western esotericism and magic, pre-modern European medicine, and late-nineteenth-century women's wellness programs. The book begins by examining concepts arising out of Greek philosophy and religion, including Pythagoreanism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Galenic medicine, theurgy, and other cultural currents that have traditionally been categorized as "Western esotericism," as well as the more recent examples which scholars of American traditions have labeled "metaphysical religion." Marshaling these under the umbrella category of "harmonialism," Foxen argues that they represent a history of practices that were gradually subsumed into the language of yoga. Orientalism and gender become important categories of analysis as this narrative moves into the nineteenth century. Women considerably outnumber men in all studies of yoga except those conducted in India, and modern anglophone yoga exhibits important continuities with women's physical culture, feminist reform, and white women's engagement with Orientalism. Foxen's study allows us to recontextualize the peculiarities of American yoga--its focus on aesthetic representation, its privileging of bodily posture and unsystematic incorporation of breathwork, and above all its overwhelmingly white female demographic. In this context it addresses the ongoing conversation about cultural appropriation within the yoga community.
Proceedings of a conference held in Sept. 2004 at Birkbeck College.
Surprisingly modern essays on the unity of all monotheistic regimens by a medieval philosopher Written in the mid-thirteenth century for the newly appointed governor of Isfahan, this compact treatise and philosophical guidebook includes a wide-ranging and accessible set of essays on ethics, psychology, political philosophy, and the unity of God. Ibn Kammūna, a Jewish scholar writing in Baghdad during a time of Mongol occupation, was a controversial figure whose writings sometimes incited riots. He argued, among other things, the commonality of all monotheisms, both prophetic and philosophical. Here, for the first time in English, is a surprisingly modern work on the unity of all monotheistic regimes from a key medieval philosopher.
In Echoes of an Invisible World Jacomien Prins offers an account of the transformation of the notion of Pythagorean world harmony during the Renaissance and the role of the Italian philosophers Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597) in redefining the relationship between cosmic order and music theory. By concentrating on Ficino’s and Patrizi’s work, the book chronicles the emergence of a new musical reality between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a reality in which beauty and the complementary idea of celestial harmony were gradually replaced by concepts of expressivity and emotion, that is to say, by a form of idealism that was ontologically more subjective than the original Pythagorean and Platonic metaphysics.
Authored by some of the most preeminent Renaissance scholars active today, the essays of this volume give fresh and illuminating analyses of important aspects of Renaissance humanism, such as the time and causes of its origin, its connection to the papal court and medieval traditions, its classical learning, its religious and literary dimensions, and its dramatis personae. Their interpretations are varied to the point of being contradictory. The essays bear the imprint of the work of the eminent scholars of the second half of the twentieth century, especially Kristeller’s, and demonstrate an awareness of the various modes of critical inquiry that have prevailed in recent years. As such they are an important exemplar of current scholarship on Renaissance humanism and are, therefore, indispensable to the scholar who wishes to explore this pivotal cultural movement. Contributors include: Robert Black, Alison Brown, Riccardo Fubini, Paul F. Grendler, James Hankins, Eckhard Kessler, Arthur F. Kinney, Angelo Mazzocco, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Massimo Miglio, John Monfasani, Charles G. Nauert, and Ronald G. Witt.